My go to stress-baking recipes are triple chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes with a citrus frosting. If you've read my last post, you'll know that right now is a pretty stressful time in the semester. The entire month of November is essentially the most academically challenging month of my time in Berlin - it's when every single one of my term paper's are due! If you thought midterms were stressful, just try experiencing that kind of stress (if not worse) every other week, for the next four weeks. Not exactly the most relaxing of thoughts. Fortunately for me, and those around me, I've just discovered/created a new recipe that is definitely going to become one of my staple stress-baking recipes :)
Now baking in Germany is not the easiest thing in the world, as I think I've said before. I'm sure the average German person doesn't have nearly as much trouble baking as I do, but that's because they know the names of ingredients, measurements and also probably have the correct measuring devices. They also probably don't use this fake brown sugar stuff I've been using (now I know I've mentioned this before... boy, I hope I'm not repeating myself too much). Fortunately, since I've come to Berlin, I've experienced enough stressful moments to have gotten my German baking down to a mindless science!
These are my terribly accurate measuring utensils.
This is why every batch of cookies comes out different.
Given the utterly exhausting day I had yesterday (seriously, studying or doing something for school - yes, even when moving from one location to another - from 9:00 - 23:00), and the persistent nature of the nightmares I've been having for the last two nights, it was essentially a given that I would need to bake something today! Unfortunately, Mondays are my worst days. I've got class until at least 19:30, and as my film professor started off class today saying that it was going to be a long one, it was likely that I wouldn't make it home until 20:00 at the earliest. After falling asleep during one of my favorite movies (M), and feeling the nausea of exhaustion rearing its ugly head, I made the executive decision to leave class after the film. This was an excellent choice on my part because it got me home in time to make dinner at a reasonable time, and had enough energy to make cookies!
After spending some time to J to discuss our Totalitarian papers, I got to work baking. It did just the trick, and has left me feeling completely relaxed and refreshed. My new Nutella recipe is absolutely amazing, and the drizzling of melted Nutella on top is just delightful! They also go quite well with a small glass of Bailey's :)
Eating the batter is always the best part
If you leave them in just a moment too long, they
go rock hard
The final, delicious product
The Recipe (My German quirks to the recipe are in parentheses):
1/2 cup of butter (eye-balled because they don't sell butter in sticks)
1/2 cup of (fake) brown sugar (a little over half a tea cup's worth)
6 Tablespoons of sugar
1 egg
1 Teaspoon vanilla (or on package of vanilla sugar, because they don't sell extract here)
1 Teaspoon baking powder (at least that's what I think this stuff is...)
1 1/4 cup Flour (a tea cup and a bit's worth)
A couple of spoonfuls of Nutella, mixed in at the end - it's best to mix it well after every spoonful, and judge for yourself how Nutella-y you want the cookies!
1) Melt the butter and fake brown sugar together, then add to the sugar (just combine, don't melt, if you're in America)
2) Add egg and vanilla
3) Slowly combine flour and alleged baking powder to the wet stuff
4) Once you've got a good looking cookie dough, start mixing in Nutella until you think it's ready!
5) Bake for ?? minutes at 350 degrees (180 Celsius) -seriously, I have no idea how long to bake them for. I just eye ball it. They should still be a little spongy in the middle, and just about to get hard on the rim. Take them out before the rims are too solid, or else they'll turn into rocks (this isn't the case in America)
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